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PARK FOREST, Ill. (WLS) — Heading into a heat wave, one suburban building is now dealing with no air conditioning.
The building has had issues with heating and air for months.
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Residents said they’re paying over $1,600 a month in rent. In south suburban Park Forest, frustration is rising, along with the mercury.
“I’ve been asking for help from a lot of people, and no one seems to hear us. We’re just regular people. We’re not asking for much,” Autumn Ridge Apartments resident Celina Lawson said.
Residents say the air conditioning in multiple buildings hasn’t been working all season.
“They’re saying it’s a repair that’s needed, but it’s like, when it first started getting hot, they said we only had to wait until June 1, and once June 1 came, nothing,” resident Doreal Veal said.
With the temperature in the 80s, in many of the units, fans can only provide so much relief.
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“Me and my wife have to stay in one room with three fans on us, and if we move to another room, we got to take all three fans with us,” resident Ronald Golston Jr. said.
But fans won’t cut it, with the dangerous heat on the way.
Park Forest Trustee Randall White says there’s only much the village can do.
“The more you push on them, the more they kind of back up, and we don’t want to have these families displaced, but we’re doing everything that we can,” White said. “The management office has air, but the residents, seniors, our families, our babies, our children, they don’t.”
Lawson said all winter her apartment didn’t have heat.
“I’m a working single mom. Can you imagine? I don’t have heat. I don’t have air,” Lawson said.
Messages left for the management company were not returned. The village has set up a cooling center at the Park Forest Police Department and First Baptist Church of Park Forest, where they’re asking people to donate fans.
An Extreme Heat Warning is in effect for Cook County until midnight Tuesday.
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